100 Years in Tokyo: Portraits of People in Japan From Ages 0 Through 100

PetaPixel

Between 2009 and 2012, Finnish photographer Petri Artturi Asikainen roamed the streets of Tokyo in search of subjects for his project 100 Years in Tokyo. His goal was to collect portraits of people for all the ages between 0 through 100. The result of the effort is a book that contains 202 beautiful portraits — the faces of a man and a woman for each age in that range.
By capturing the faces of the people that live in Tokyo, Asikainen hoped to capture a portrait of the city as a whole.

Using a Nikon D3 DSLR, Asikainen would approach strangers (or their parents) and ask two questions. The first was, “Can I take a picture of you?” If the answer was yes, he would ask a second (more important) question: “How old are you?”

By the end of three years of shooting this project off and on, Asikainen approached nearly 2,500 people and captured roughly 500 portraits. The images show people from all walks of life: students, businessmen, the homeless, nursing home residents, and people with various hobbies.

Once he had the images he needed, he set to work editing them down to 202 of the best portraits.

2 years old

16 years old

27 years old

39 years old

48 years old

60 years old

74 years old

93 years old

100 years old

The 216-page photobook is now widely available in Tokyo and Helsinki. You can find details of its availability here. Here’s a video showing a flip-through of the entire book: